I recently had the pleasure of working with a client I've worked with in the past. She recently moved into a one-bedroom condo in a fabulous neighborhood and she wanted me to put together a home inventory for her insurance company, so that in case of a fire or other disaster, she'll have a record of her possessions.
My assistant and I tag-teamed the project. I called out the description of each item while she quickly typed them into an Excel spreadsheet. We began in the master closet and a mere 5 1/2 hours later we emerged, having logged...468 items. Bear in mind, this isn't a huge closet, and my client is a single professional woman who doesn't have an excessive amount of clothing -- or possessions in general for that matter. She does have several drawers of jewelry in the closet, so each bracelet, necklace and pair of earrings gets its own line, which accounted for 160 of the 748 lines. That means everything else in this relatively small closet required upwards of 550 lines. And that's just the closet!
In total, we logged over 1700 line items and spent 9 1/2 hours on the project. I'm not complaining; It was actually a really enjoyable project! My point is that a home inventory reveals just how MANY individual items you own, even if you're only a single person in a small one-bedroom condo. It's almost boggling to imagine how many thousands of lines would be on an inventory for a multi-person household full of clutter. Oh my, I have to go lie down now. And while I'm napping, you might consider getting rid of a few things...
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